


Of a Different Stripe

by Eoraptor



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, Mystery, No Ship, No Smut, Original Character(s), no reveal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 15:21:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6381748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eoraptor/pseuds/Eoraptor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new Miraculous has appeared in Paris, but this new hero seems far more mysterious than the great public heroes of the city. Who is she, where does she come from, and are Ladybug and Chat Noir ready for a third partner?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir” created by Thomas Astruc, and property of French TF1, Korean EBS, and English rights to Nickelodeon. This work is a fan-work, intended under fair-use and not-for profit, I don’t own anything other than the original characters.

**_ “Of a Different Stripe” _ **

**_By Eoraptor_ **

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

“Is there anything more beautiful than Paris at night, m’Lady?”

 

“Yeah, Paris, at night, without fighting Omelette du Fromage…” Ladybug ducked an incoming projectile from the chicken-themed organic farmer and sighed as it exploded into a cheesy mess behind her, “Focus Kitty Cat!”

 

“Yeah, see what you mean!” Chat Noir ducked under a strand of cheese as he ran around to help her up, “Not exactly how I was EGGspecting to spend my evening.”

 

Ladybug rolled her aquamarine eyes at the ever-present puns and blew a strand of violet hair out of her face, “Seriously… for magical spandex, I wish it could breathe just a bit better.”

 

The slinky feline eyed his partner a bit too keenly. When he was caught, he ran a hand through his own sweaty golden hair, “Yeah, well count yourself lucky, magic black leather is worse, especially in broad daylight, with the sun beating down...”

 

Ladybug eyed the cat archly for a moment, before shrugging and conceding the point. Then she turned and looked at the explodey cheesy mess surrounding them in the Bois de Boulogne’s largest grotto. At least they were here this time, and not somewhere that expensive things could be damaged like the Louvre. Or the plaza beneath Tour Eiffel.

 

Then she refocused on the chicken-man in blue over-alls.

 

Looking up, the black cat considered the yolky mess he had stepped in reaching to help Ladybug to her feet. “What do you think, the Akuma in his hat? His basket? It is full of those magic eggs after all…”

 

“Mmmm, I don’t think so…” She shook her head, considering aloud,” They usually protect their magic fetishes…”

 

Bending over, she picked up a stalk of celery from where it lay, studying it. Then she flicked it at the evilized farmer’s hat, sending it off his feathered and masked head. He was put off by the attack, but he certainly didn’t panic and pounce on the straw chapeau. Turning to face the heroes, he reached into his over-flowing basket, this time grabbing what seemed to be a large wheel of cantal, which magically expanded its way out of the farmer’s small panier.

 

His motion to roll the huge 36 kilo wheel at the heroes was interrupted by Chat Noir’s magic staff. It lanced out from his hand, shooting through the handle of his basket as it extended. A flick of the hero’s wrist sent the basket flying, spilling some farm-goods out on the way.

 

The deranged farmer snorted and dropped the giant cheese wheel, turning around his pitchfork when deprived of his ammunition.

 

“Nope, you’re right, not the basket either...” the feline hero sighed, retracting his staff.

 

Then he yelped and dodged, half-bending backwards when the pitchfork magically extended just like his staff, rocketing at him with four glinting tines.

 

“Whoa! I think I get the point!” He panted, watching Ladybug’s yoyo swing out and wrap around the shaft of the implement, intercepting it and tugging it aside to lance past him somewhat harmlessly and just in the nick of time.

 

“What did I say about paying attention?!” She hollered, recalling the yoyo as the pitchfork simultaneously retracted. “Or next time you will!”

 

“I didn’t know you cared, m’Lady!” He purred and backflipped closer to the Ladybug.

 

“What, I wouldn’t just BUG-out and leave you.” She smirked and spun her yoyo a few times.

 

Chat Noir clutched his heart, looking as though he’d been struck.

 

“That bad?” she cocked her head to the side, eyes wide with concern.

 

“No no! I think you’ve PUNished me enough!” he crowed, pressing the back of a hand to his forehead.

 

Ladybug snorted and whipped the magical bug fetish around at the end of her arm a few more times. “Just keep those big green eyes on the prize, Kitty Cat.”

 

Blinking them poignantly, Chat Noir turned and looked for Omelette du Fromage. “Uh… Speaking of bugged out…”

 

Ladybug sighed and started looking around for the Akumatized farmer as well. “Crud, I can’t see him!”

 

“Maybe I can…” the black cat intoned. Concentrating a moment, he summoned his night vision powers, peering through the dusky city greenspace.

 

The entire park blossomed into clear, albeit green daylight. “There!”

 

“Where?!” Ladybug stared around helplessly.

 

“There!” the feline themed hero pointed, and then smacked himself in the face, realizing that she couldn’t see the bibbed chicken-man skulking through the wooded space at the edge of the grotto. “There, look towards the Fortifications highway!”

 

Ladybug did, momentarily lamenting that while Chat Noir got night vision and kitty claws, she got the black and white motion-based vision of a ladybug. Finally, she saw the darkened outline of the chicken-man backlit by the traffic from the main artery road.

 

“Wait, there’s someone else!” He warned when she whipped her yoyo around to latch onto a tree branch, intending to sling her way forward.

 

It took her a moment, but she saw the outline of… something. She slashed out with her yoyo to latch another tree branch, and then heard the sounds of thrashing about in the woods.

 

A moment later the pitchfork came spinning airborne out of the woods with a wicked whistling sound. Ladybug had just enough time, in the gloom, to cartwheel out of the way before it impaled the ground where she had been standing. She watched it bounce back and forth on its metal tines a few times before bobbing to a stop standing straight up between her empty footprints.

 

“Quick! Smash it!” came a distinctly feminine cry.

 

“Who was that?!” the polka-dot themed heroine scratched her head, looking from the farm implement to the copse of trees.

 

“I don’t know,” Chat bounded over to the pitch-fork. “But Let’s not look a gift-horse in the mouth.”

 

He grabbed the smooth wood handle of the fork in a hand, and then executed a spin, driving his foot into the haft midway down. The implement gave a crack, splintering where his foot struck.

 

“Darn this thing is tough!” he lamented when it stood intact despite the fracture.

 

“What do you expect? It’s a magically imbued farm tool, not an egg shell…” Ladybug chewed her lip when the fork failed to snap, reclaiming her yoyo from the tree branch and whipping it around to gain some speed for a strike of her own. “Hit it again!”

 

“No!!!” Came a terrified and enraged cry, followed by a disconcerting clucking.

 

Two shapes exploded from the growth along the path; one at ground level, revealing the evil-incarnated farmer, feathers flying behind him and hat flipping off as he charged. Above him the canopy of old fir trees exploded as well, accompanied by a sort of growling sound.

 

“Oh for the love of… Here! Let me!”  the airborne form landed right next to Chat Noir, a few paces ahead of Omelette du Fromage.

 

“Fortitude!” She cried out and held her hand back, poised to strike. There was a sort of shimmering in the air, and a golden light enveloped the gloved hand of a woman who was revealed by the sudden burst of energy and illuminance.

 

She swung the glowing fist down, opening her hand at the last instant and striking the handle of the magically imbued farm implement. Her gloved fingers struck at the haft with magical speed, and in an instant it exploded in a cloud of splinters, which were swept aside as her blow continued through, leaving a notable wind in its wake to carry the splinters away.

 

Chat Noir and Ladybug stared at the revealed woman in dumbstruck awe as she completed her attack by spinning down to one knee, the shattered handle clutched in her hand, apparently expending the rest of her supernatural momentum with a flourish.

 

The mystery woman looked up, and then around, and then pointed, “I believe this is where you take over?”

 

Ladybug looked around dumbly, following the pointing glove. After a stunned moment she saw it, the purple and black butterfly form of the Akuma released from its fetish. “Oh… Oh!”

 

Her yoyo already orbiting her arm in a high-speed spin, she nodded grimly, “No more evil for you little akuma!”

 

The black-spotted magic yoyo lashed out and scissored open, revealing its magical interior. It inhaled the evil sprite and latched close, and the lavender haired heroine retrieved it with a snap of her wrist. She tapped out a quick incantation on the spots of her charm and smiled as she felt the evil aura evaporate. “Bye bye little butterfly!”

 

She watched the little cabbage white butterfly flutter off into the night with a smile, and then looked around, a bit at a loss. She hadn’t called on a Lucky Charm, so how did she dispatch the evil chaos that Omelette du Fromage had wrought?

 

 _“Use your item!”_ she heard a familiar whisper.  It was Tiki’s voice, except that it wasn’t real; she had felt it in her mind more than heard it outright.

 

Concentrating, she spun her yoyo around again, and hurled it skywards, the way she would when calling on her magical attack. “Lucky Charm!”

 

The enchanted toy lanced skywards and she watched it spin around at the end of the taught line, its halves again opening like Ladybug shells. The expected burst of magical light blossomed and a wash of red ladybugs spread over the area.

 

The three turned and looked, and witnessed Omelette du Fromage surrounded by the mystic purification, transforming from an anthropomorphized chicken in suspenders back into just a farmer. The spans of stretchy cheese, and shattered egg shells, and various organically and magically grown vegetable projectiles all evaporated under the purifying wave, leaving Bois de Bouglogne once again a pristine greenspace in the heart of Paris.

 

“Not that I don’t appreciate the help, Lady… but who…” Chat Noir turned back, trying to stumble past his surprise at the intervention.

 

“Who are you?!” Ladybug whirled around faster, already suspicious of the seeming magical help.

 

“Tigress d’Or.” She smiled, and with a flourish she snapped a hand fan open before her face, hiding the burgeoning smirk she wore.

 

The fan was a sort of metalic fabric, shimmering in the lamp-light of the park. Its decoration was simplistic, inky black bars spanning from top to pivot; sinuous tiger stripes.

 

Both Miraculous Heroes took a weary step back, examining the newcomer. She indeed was decked out to be a golden tiger. Where Ladybug wore tights of red with black spots, faintly faceted like a Beetle’s armor, and Chat Noir wore a sort of pebbly black leather like the street guardian he was, the Tigress woman wore satinish tights which gave the impression of soft fur while still being sleek fabric.

 

Neither hero could at the moment see the tights’ true color owing to their own transformations, but both were willing to bet that the outfit was orange-to-gold, and the organic black tiger stripes wrapped around her body and shoulders from the back, leaving most of her front a solid color and giving the impression of a cat’s belly.

 

Like Chat Noir she had a sort of tail trailing behind her body; but where his was a backwards-turned belt, hers took the form of a sarong, roguishly slanted across her hips like a sash, the knot tied in the back to drape down and create the tail. It also bore dark stripes in its folded matrix.

 

But unlike the black alley cat, she didn’t have bulky boots and gloves. Rather her gloves were feminine, fashionable, and pointed, and tipped in fine claws less obvious than his. Her boots, like Ladybug’s, were in-built affairs, though they came in a much taller and more daring heel than the spotted heroine’s, poising and accentuating powerful muscles in her legs.

 

Her mask was again different, a lightly colored field over her eyes and cheeks, the edges darted downwards, two stylized tiger stripes framing her eyes and also giving the impression of dagger-like fangs. A third triangular stripe anointed her nose, between two gleaming cat’s eyes that resembled Chat Noir’s enchanted orbs.

 

Above her head, her hair was lightly colored, and cut upwards into a sort of spiked pixie cut, thought it at least lacked the same stripes of all her other affectations. Strung through the spikes were a set of decorative black-tipped light-colored ears, a bit more rounded than Chat’s.

 

And on her neck she bore a black choker, and upon the front of her throat, an elliptical gem graced it. It was slanted slightly from left to right, giving the impression of, what else, a tiger’s eye. Except that rather than being an eye, it bore five simple vertical tiger stripes, again receding from top to bottom.

 

And just like Ladybug’s five spots, and Chat Noir’s five-part paw print; as the two heroes watched the newcomer, one of the stipes blinked and then vanished.

 

“Well, that would be my cue to depart it seems!” She gave her fan another coquettish flutter, her grinning lips still hidden.

 

“b- but…” Ladybug was still confused and non-plussed.

 

“Nope! You know the rules! Secret Identities must stay secret!” She gave a grin, though her voice seemed less friendly now and again slightly growling.

 

She executed a spin before Ladybug and Chat Noir, her free hand producing a second fan with a flick. With her spin a wind came up, sweeping up loose pine needles and dust from the path around them, seemingly driven by her twin fans. The debris served to force the two heroes back and to shut their eyes against the dust and debris.

 

When they both opened them a moment later, the wind was dying away, and the mysterious Tigress d’Or was gone.

 

“Well… that was…” Chat Noir trailed off, for once at a loss for words.

 

“Yeah… different.” Ladybug sighed, rubbing a hand over her face to clear it of a few stray needles. Then she heard a beeping at her ears, and realized her own magical transformation was wearing thin as well. “And that would be my cue too… can you take care of our misguided farmer, Kitty Cat?”

 

“Uh… sure! Sure…” the debonair alley cat nodded, realizing that he alone had not unsheathed his Cataclysm attack and still had plenty of time on the magical clock. “At you’re leave m’Ladybug!”

 

“Thanks Kitty! See you soon, looks like you’ve got your own row to hoe tonight!” She winked at him and spun her yoyo out, latching on to a nearby street lamp at the edge of the park and swinging away into the night.

 

With a sigh, the disguised Adrien Agreste turned and made his way over to the befuddled farmer, “You alright Mister Agriculteur?”

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir” created by Thomas Astruc, and property of French TF1, Korean EBS, and English rights to Nickelodeon. This work is a fan-work, intended under fair-use and not-for profit, I don’t own anything other than the original characters.

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

**__ **

Marinette hated nighttime escapades. Oh she still got in ahead of her curfew, and she doubted her parents would have cared much if she had missed it seeing how much they tended to trust her most of the time; excepting the one time she had been called out by the school for all her missed periods and they had clamped down on her freedom for a week, and only a week. But getting in at eight thirty PM on a Tuesday night in the middle of October left her without a lot of time to tackle all those things a fifteen-year-old girl needed to tackle between getting home and going to sleep.

 

She landed on the widow’s walk outside her bedroom with not a moment to spare. Even slinging across Paris with the supernatural speed and grace of the Miraculous Ladybug, five minutes from Bois de Boulogne back to the Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie and her family’s apartments above it was cutting things close. She’d learned her lessons on that one the hard way.

 

The first week after meeting Tikki and Chat Noir, Ladybug had been returning home, taking her time to enjoy the scenery of Paris at sunset from the unique vantage afforded Superheroes, after defeating Stormy Weather. She wasn’t paying attention to the state of her magic despite her training from the little pink Kwami, and didn’t even realize the last of her spots on her earrings had beeped out of existence. She de-transformed mid-swing; going from Ladybug, Heroine of Paris, back to Marinette Dupain-Cheng, clumsy fifteen-year-old girl. Her magical yoyo evaporated from her hand and she went tumbling towards the ground at unsafe speeds, right at the same moment her beetle-themed armor vanished from her body.

 

Her only saving grace was that she had been at the bottom of her swinging arc when it happened, only a meter off the ground. Physics was a harsh Mistress, and she hit the pavement of Rue Gottlieb going a good ten kilometers per hour, faster than walking, or even running speed. Her upward arcing motion caused her to land on her bottom instead of something else, for which she was eternally grateful. Had she been trending downwards she would have hit the street face first.

 

As it was, her heroic hubris cost her badly skinned palms and a pocket ripped out of her brand new capris, as well as a bruised tailbone and worse pride.

 

But she counted herself as supremely lucky for a change… What would have become of her had she de-transformed at the top of her sling, four or five stories off the ground? All that might be left of her would be a split open head and a nasty streak on the pavement. Tikki had been nearly catatonic from the energy expended on Ladybug that day, and had popped into existence as well, rolling and flopping to a stop in the gutter. Once she came around and realized what had happened, she had chided Marinette as sternly as she could about it all the way home with that cartoonish little-girl voice.

 

After that, Marinette made sure to always give herself one spot to spare on her way home; to get down to the ground and find an alley or a public toilet or something to slink into and de-transform on her own two feet when the fourth spot on her earrings vanished.

 

Tonight she couldn’t really afford that level of caution. If she’d dropped to the ground when her fourth spot disappeared, she would still have been four kilometers from home, at night, with no money for a cab, and would have missed her curfew by more than just a few minutes. Plus, she would have go in by the front door, meaning her parents _would_ know she’d been out very late by their standards.

 

As soon as the violet-haired girl emerged from the red and black tights of the Ladybug, Tikki drifted off to find food for herself, making mumbled apologies and fluttering sleepily through the air down into the bakery’s kitchens.

 

Marinette pouted hard at that and almost stamped her foot. She desperately wanted… needed to question Tikki about the appearance of a new Miraculous Hero tonight and all the ramifications of it. Who was Tigress d’Or? What powers did she have? Could Marinette contact her via Miraculous Fetish the way she called Chat Noir on the Ladybug Yoyo from time to time?

 

But, the teen huffed, forcing herself to calm down; Tikki would be useless until she had eaten, napped, and otherwise recharged her magical batteries. That she was awake at all, and not asleep in Marinette’s handbag was itself a marvel. The fashionable girl was used to the little bobble-headed sprite being completely drained and catatonic if she took herself to the point of forced de-transformation.

 

Marinette watched the rose-colored Kwami bump into a wall instead of phasing through it, further reminding herself that her magical partner was in a fugue and in no state to answer questions, and sighed heavily. But Tigress was fresh in her mind and if Tikki couldn’t answer her queries, then there was someone else who could; Paris’s resident intrepid Miraculous Blogger, Alya Césaire.

 

Taking a seat before her desktop, the twin-tailed girl clicked on the browser and called up “The Ladyblog,” Alya’s fanatically researched web portal dedicated to Paris’s grande heroes, and in particular to Ladybug.

 

Marinette was not just surprised, but actually shocked, to see that it had not yet been updated with rampant speculations about tonight’s events. Alya practically made a superpower of being to update the site on the fly from her cellphone with photos, videos, and rampant speculation.

 

But, Marinette reminded herself, Alya did have a life outside the blog, as well as numerous siblings to try and keep track of. And if she wasn’t mistaken, then Tuesday Nights were Alya’s parent’s date nights, leaving the ebullient blogger to babysit her myriad siblings.

 

Sighing, the teen clicked around the blog a bit. While Alya herself may not have yet glommed on to Omelette du Frommage’s rampage, or the existence of a mysterious new Miraculous, she was hardly the only girl in Paris with a cellphone. Already there were three grainy videos showing parts of the fight by people who had been walking in Bois de Boulogne around and just after sunset.

 

None of them seemed to have caught the new tiger-themed Miraculous, between the dim lighting and the inherent danger of the situation; but at least one person had posted a comment mentioning the new golden girl in vague terms, talking about her tiger stripes and fans.

 

With a morose groan, Marinette closed the Ladyblog, having exhausted the few clues it seemed to contain.

 

Maybe in the morning Tikki and/or Alya would actually have some answers for her. Until then she had French and History homework that she had to tackle before bed. But first, maybe she should see if there were any new pictures of Adrien Agreste on the internet… purely for fashion research, of course.

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

“All that beautiful hand crafted cheese! And I didn’t get to eat any of it!” Plagg whined as he materialized from within Adrien’s ring.

 

The blond boy listened to the nasal complaints from the little cat-sprite and rolled his eyes. “It was magical cursed cheese, Plagg, somehow I doubt it would have agreed with you. Eh, if it didn’t just disappear from your belly outright when Ladybug cleansed the park.”

 

The Kwami gave an offended sniff and tilted his oversized head up with effrontery. Adrien again rolled his eyes, and produced a stick of string cheese from his jacket pocket. When Plagg had the temerity to turn his nose up at that too, the boy huffed and threw up his hands, “Fine! Go find your own food then. I’m not going to carry around oozing L'Eveque foils in my pocket all day long. I’ll smell like a gym locker!”

 

“If only,” the Kwami complained again and fluttered off through the wall, intent on finding the gooey Livarot that he knew was on hand down in the presentation kitchen.

 

It was only once he was gone that Adrien realized he should have thought to ask about the new cat in town. Then again, Plagg tended to volunteer information the way politicians volunteered time and effort, begrudgingly and with an oily disingenuous smile. He’d been fighting Akuma’s for months now, and he still didn’t know anything about them beyond “created by HawkMoth,” “smash the fetish,” and “Ladybug can banish them.”

 

With a great flop, the teen dropped backwards onto his bed and stared up at the two story ceiling of his suite. He wondered where his Lady Bug was tonight, and what she was thinking about. Almost certainly about the golden tiger, since the purple-headed girl’s mind never seemed to stop working.

 

He didn’t blame her being suspicious… between the times he had been enthralled by Dark Cupid and duplicated by CopyCat and depowered by Reflekta, he bet that anyone, particularly his partner, would be weary of mysterious new super-powered people suddenly showing up and claiming to be an ally while trying to interact with him or her.

 

He wondered a few other things in relation to the Tigress. He might or might not know who Ladybug was in everyday life; he firmly believed that they must travel in the same circles. They always managed to show up at the same places and same times, even when those places were highly specific, like a junior high school or a hotel encased inside an impenetrable magic field… So then, did he also know the spikey haired tiger too? She was taller than he was, so that ruled out blondes at the school like Rose and Chloé… Juleka was tall though.

 

With a grunt and a sigh, Adrien rolled over onto his stomach. This way madness lay, he knew. He’d spent so many days and nights trying to figure out who Ladybug might be. He knew that she had a strict prohibition about not sharing their identities, and he respected that to the utmost. But curiosity was inherent both to felines and teenage boys, so he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 

“Adrien?” there was a firm knock at his door. “Your father wishes to know if you’re coming down to dinner or not.”

 

The blond boy’s head popped up and he cursed himself. He’d completely forgotten that they had a late dinner planned, one of the rare times they ate evening meals together owing to Gabriel Agreste’s packed schedule involved with running his fashion empire. He looked at his watch. Already it was a few minutes past nine; late for a full dinner, but his father was absolutely a man of his word.

 

And by “wishing to know if his son was coming down for dinner or not,” the elder Agreste was not asking for confirmation, but stating in a passive-aggressive way his disapproval of tardiness and expectation that his son _would_ be there.

 

Feeling suddenly much more tired than he had a moment ago, he got up and straightened his jacket. It wasn’t that he hated his father in any way; but the man had a way of finding every flaw in his son and pointing them out with cool disdain. It was wearying, even if it came from a place of wanting his son to be the very best Agreste he could be and living up to his parent’s legacy; a glowing supermodel mother and a business magnate father.

 

“Be right there Nathalie.” He tried to make his voice more chipper and energetic than he felt, knowing that if he moped his way to dinner it would be just one more thing to be hounded out of him.

 

“And bring your homework. Your father wants to discuss how far your academic marks are coming.” The cool assistant reported through the door.

 

Adrien cursed himself. Until just this moment he had forgotten he even had French homework due tomorrow. Scrambling, he grabbed his textbook and some notes hastily copied from Nino, hoping they would pass muster with his father.

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

By the next morning, Marinette felt more than a bit run-down. Between homework, web surfing, and worrying after Tigress d’Or, she’d let herself stay up way too late. She envied Chat Noir’s laisse faire approach to life, and sincerely doubted he had spared more than a thought to the new Miraculous with the magical choker.

 

The choker itself vexed Marinette. To Ladybug it was a magical item akin to her own fetishized earrings and Chat Noir’s ring; but to Marinette, the fashion statement was thick with layers and meaning. In French History they had dozens of connotations. Miss Bustier’s Literature class alone cited them being worn both by Queens and by prostitutes, and she also knew that in the twenties and thirties a black one was a high-sign for lesbians.

 

She was so caught up in her estimations that she almost screamed when Alya grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her excitedly, “I said did you hear that there’s a new Miraculous?!”

 

Marinette boggled for a second when the two trains of thought collided in Alya’s babbling. Then she shook her head and put on a big smile. Well that answered the question of whether or not Alya had heard anything.

 

And the smile wasn’t entirely an affectation. Alya’s family were from Martinique, and she had an infectious and friendly energy that Marinette found hard to resist. It was like a happy contagion that she really needed this morning.

 

“I saw something about it last night, but there were no pictures or anything.” She caught herself up to the conversation rapidly.

 

“Well, witnesses say she called herself Golden Tigress!” Alya inaccurately reported as she touched a finger to her chin, assuming her ‘intrepid reporter’ stance. “And she had golden hand fans that made a magical wind! And heels! She wore heels!”

 

Well, two out of three wasn’t bad, Marinette supposed. Technically she was right on all points, except that the tigress had used the French form for her name.

 

“Heels? What kind of hero fights crime in like heels?” Chloé Bourgeois sneered, overhearing the report from where she stood next to her appointed seat.

 

“Well,” Alya whirled and speared the blonde with an authoritative look, “There’s Wonder Woman, and Black Cat, and Fluer de Lys, and Catwoman, and Agent Honeydo, and…”

 

“Aren’t half of those actually supervillains?” Sabrina appeared dutifully at Chloé’s side, inclining her head curiously.

 

Alya fumed, even if Sabrina was right.

 

“What about Shego? And Powergirl?” Rose suddenly intoned from where she was sitting at the top of the row.

 

“I think they wear flats.” Her ever-present cohort Juleka quietly supplied. “Or boots. Definitely boots.”

 

“Yeah, half of them went from heels to boots.” Adrien dutifully reported, holding up a fashion magazine showing the aforementioned Powergirl hovering in the air, her flat boots very clearly evident.

 

“And some of them aren’t even really boots, but kind of built in booty things…” Nino chimed in from beside him. “Like Ladybug wears.”

 

From there the entire class seemed to become involved in the merits of superhero footwear. At least until Miss Bustier let herself into the room and clapped her hands for quiet.

 

Alya and Marinette quickly slipped into their seats behind Nino and Adrien, making a show of being prepared to listen to their French Literature lesson by sitting up straight.

 

Alya rolled her eyes when Chloé’s pose reflected her utter disinterest in the subject and she all but continued the footwear conversation with Sabrina, before a stern look from the teacher. Marinette did her best to ignore her. Chloé rubbed her absolutely the wrong way… but she was Adrien’s dear friend for some reason, so the fashionable girl tried not to say a cross word against her without a very clear case.

 

Miss Brasier smiled when things settled down, “Alright class, French writers have been awarded more Nobel Prizes in Literature than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. France itself ranks first in the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country. Who can name a few of the laureates?”

 

  ** _~Miraculous~_**

 

By the time the class was excused for lunch, Adrien’s head hurt a bit. He knew his father would look very dimly on his lack of knowledge in French art and culture, but perhaps his one saving grace was that no one else in class had a much better command of names like Modiano, Simon, Bergeson, and Rolland.

 

Well no one except for Ivan and Juleka. Why was it the two quietest kids in class seemed so deeply versed in influential works and heady verse? Well, Adrien knew Ivan fancied himself a poet; but Juleka was barely verbal, and more than a little creepy. If anything, he’d expect her to know the works of Romero, not Modiano.

 

He felt a clap on his back and looked to see Nino ushering him out of the room. And right towards Alya and Marinette in the plaza. He groaned and tried to steer away from them, but Nino seemed intent on some purpose.

 

The closer they got to the girls, the more uncertain Adrien became. Marinette made him very… uneasy. They had not gotten off on the best foot to start with, and it had taken him weeks to finally earn her trust after he got caught up in one of Chloé’s schemes. On top of that, she always seemed uncertain and wrong-footed around him too, fumbling for her words and chewing the scenery, as if she’d rather be anywhere but in his presence.

 

Things were only made worse when he eventually met her en masque as Chat Noir. She triggered very protective feelings in him, and was not nearly as vexing and contrary as Ladybug was, or as abrasive and callow as Chloé.

 

And she was so quietly confident. At least when Adrien Agreste wasn’t around it seemed.

 

So of course the first thing she did when she turned around and saw Adrien was to drop her folder on the asphalt in a nervous fluster, bend over to pick it up, and somehow upset her balance and flip over to land on her bottom in a clumsy summersault.

 

Nino laughed and Alya rolled her eyes in some sort of knowing conspiracy.

 

“Well, at least I never have to worry about you being confused with Ladybug.” She snorted, reaching down to help up her amorously befuddled classmate. “If someone gave you a magic yoyo, you’d end up cocooned in it and hanging from the ceiling.”

 

Marinette gave a hurt expression and rubbed the back of her head self-consciously.

 

“Well not all of us have got turned into evil monsters with super-powers and skin tight costumes.” She huffed, rubbing her bottom as she got to her feet.

 

“Yeah, not everyone… just almost everyone…” Nino nodded, grinning at the shared shame of the class. “Let’s see here… I was The Bubbler, Ivan was Stoneheart, Juleka was Reflekta, Rose turned into Princess Perfume, Alya became Lady Wifi…”

 

“Yeah,” Alya half-winced at that, but picked up the thread of the discussion, “Alix became Timebreaker, and her brother the Pharaoh, Nathanael became the Evillustrator… um, then there was Mylène as Horrificator, and Kim turned into the Dark Cupid. Max transformed into Gamer, Sabrina became Vanisher and that turned Chloé into the Anti-bug.”

 

“So I guess that just leaves you and Adrien in the normal people club.” Nino concluded, throwing his arm around Alya, who didn’t exactly shy away from it.

 

Marinette’s eyes went wide. She was rapidly being ruled out as an Akuma, and that was because she was one of the two people in the City, or three now, who were responsible for fighting them. And now she didn’t even have the cover of “average student Marinette Dupain-Cheng” because getting akumatized was the new normal for her class.

 

“Oh no!” Alya, surprisingly, swept in with her cover-story, holding up a finger in realization. “Remember, The Pharaoh turned her into one of his one-hundred mummy army! And she was one of the army of knights! Two for One if not an Akuma!”

 

Marinette let go a relieved breath as she ducked her head. Then she looked up, grinning cheekily, “So I guess that really only leaves you, Adrien!”

 

Adrien’s cheeks flushed, his thoughts unknowingly much the same as Marinette’s as he realized that by virtue of being Chat Noir, he was suddenly the odd man out for not being turned into an evil emotionally manipulated monster. “Uh… I… ugh… that is to say…!”

 

“Hmmm, so what would Adrien get turned into?” Alya struck a pose, as though narrating her video blog while she considered the model-turned-student.

 

“Top Model! Able to freeze people with a glance and a smile!” Nino cried as he grinned.

 

“No, how about… The Fashionista! Able to command you into your perfect outfit at a whim!” Alya jabbed a finger at the pretty boy.

 

Alya and Nino looked to Marinette, expecting her now to supply a theory of Akumatization.

 

The twin-tailed girl, however, was horrified at the thought of having to fight the object of her affections. She’d sooner battle Chat Noir than the gorgeous blond boy before her. “…uhh… Well… how about… Um… Chat Juane? Because… you know… he has yellow hair and is all neat and slinky?”

 

The dark-skinned pair looked dumbfounded at the weak answer, their jaws hanging slack. Adrien seemed to want to climb into his belly button at all the attention focused on him, his face flushed crimson with embarrassment.

 

After a moment, Alya made an obnoxious buzzing sound, picking Nino’s arm off her shoulder and dropping it as she sauntered over to Marinette to throw an arm companionably around her, “There’s already been at least two Copy Cat Blondes… but thanks for playing! Nino, tell her what she’s won?!”

 

Nino quickly picked up on the Gameshow trope and grinned, “Well Alya, contestants not appearing in the final round will get a copy of ‘Akuma! The Play-at-Home game of possession!’”

 

Marinette was about to complain at her treatment at the hands of her friends when all four of them felt the ground beneath their feet shake with thunderous portent.

 

“Speaking of Possessions…” she muttered to herself, looking to the horizon for signs of trouble.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Well, for anyone who’s watched the show in its entirety now knows where I’ve set the story at least. So for those of you only watching the English Dub on Nickelodeon, this probably contains a long list of spoilers, sorry! Remember… “REVIEWS = LOVE”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir” created by Thomas Astruc, and property of French TF1, Korean EBS, and English rights to Nickelodeon. This work is a fan-work, intended under fair-use and not-for profit, I don’t own anything other than the original characters.

Marinette really felt like she ought to be getting used to this after so many months. Still, smoke on the horizon, or breaking tv news reports, or the screams of her friends; whatever it happened to be on a given day, crisis never failed to instill in her a sense of excitement and of panic.

 

Her first instinct was to find a corner of the school to transform into Ladybug.

 

But first instincts were often wrong. Because as soon as Alya saw the smoke against the skyline, she smelled a new story, possibly one involving the heroes of Paris. Predictably, she took off running in that direction, “Come on, Girl!”  


Marinette palmed her face and muttered. Truly her friend should have been a fire fighter or a police woman with that amount of sheer bravery and gall. But no, she had to desire to be a reporter!

 

At least they were moving in the right direction, she supposed, as Alya tugged her along by the wrist. And it must be close by as she could faintly hear the ringing of an old-style alarm bell after just a few city blocks.

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

Adrien didn’t find himself so hard-pressed. Nino wasn’t exactly a coward, but he wasn’t the type to rush in where angels feared to tread either. The Moroccan-descended boy made the wise choice to head in the opposite direction, towards home for lunch.

 

Though he did turn back when he realized his best bud wasn’t following, “Dude?”

 

“Ah… I think I forgot my algebra book!” the blond model demurred

 

“I think getting away from that danger trumps any homework!” he beckoned with a hand.

 

“You know my dad!” Adrien countered, and not in jest, “Unless the attack is on the school itself, there’s no excuses with him!”

 

The dark-skinned boy frowned and chewed his lip, indeed knowing how ferocious Gabriel Agreste could and would be. Finally, he nodded, “Alright, just keep your head down man.”

 

As Nino fast-walked in the other direction, Adrien breathed out in relief and ducked back inside the school. Since it was lunch time, and since trouble was brewing somewhere within ear-shot, the place that had been a hotbed of Akuma activity had rightfully cleared out at the first opportunity.

 

Ducking into the locker room and shooting a glance around with keen green eyes, he opened up his jacket, “Plaag, Claws Out!”

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

“Look! I was right girl!” Alya pointed to the roofline as the two girls ran towards the ever-sharpening alarm bell and thickening smoke.

 

“Right about what?” Marinette followed the pointing finger of her taller friend. Then she saw it.

 

Or rather Him. Chat Noir, leaping and pole-vaulting from roof to roof in the same direction they were going, and making much better time.

 

Marinette frowned and chewed her lip. She _really_ needed to transform and join him.

 

But Alya was right there, literally dragging her along. Becoming Ladybug was a non-starter so long as the islander girl was within earshot. The purple-haired teenager knew that there would be absolutely no dissuading Alya now that she had seen Chat Noir. She could only hope that maybe in the chaos of whatever they found that she could sneak away.

 

Why not? It had worked when Akhenaten had appeared at the Louvre.

 

Watching the black cat fade into the distance atop his extensible pole, Marinette upped her pace even further, trying to keep up with Alya’s longer legs and growing excitement.

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

Arriving on scene, Chat Noir felt an instant sense of puzzlement. While there was definitely smoke pouring out of the front of the banking building and into the sky, the area bore none of the sense of chaos that usually came with an Akuma attack.

 

His explanation came a moment later when three masked men came pouring out of the door with the smoke. They were all carrying sub-machine guns, and each had a bag of cash in their off hands.

 

So no Akuma… just a good old fashioned stick-up.

 

Several things struck the disguised Adrien as odd about this; firstly, who robbed banks anymore? Most banks, even the big financial ones in the heart of Paris like this one, didn’t actually keep a lot of cash on hand, and that which they did was locked up in the teller machines, not in safes.

 

And two; guns? Automatic ones? This was Paris, not Chicago!

 

“Okay Chat… get a grip… if they were law abiding gun owners, they wouldn’t be robbing a bank would they?” he assured himself as he perched on the adjacent roof and watched the scene unfold.

 

Just as he was deciding how best to confront the very dangerous criminals, he heard a whoosh. Looking down with the enhanced vision of an alleycat, he could _just_ make out a feminine outline prowling in the shadows next to the Credit Suisse building, approaching the door.

 

If he, with his magically enhanced senses, could only just see the form; then the bank robbers were completely unaware of it.

 

And then there was a sort of roar, dispelling any illusions which Chat had that it was Ladybug sneaking up.

 

“Drop everything!” Tigress d’Or bellowed as she exploded from the shadows. “Hands Up!”

 

She seemed to propel herself forward on a gust of wind from her hand-fans, half-leaping and half-skating into the midst of the trio. The group of bandits seemed none too pleased at the appearance of the svelte woman in their midst. The guns, already held at the ready, swung around menacingly.

 

At which time Alya Cerise and Marinette Dupain-Cheng appeared in the corner of Chat Noir’s vision on the street. Cursing all his rotten luck, Chat tried to divide his attention between his foolish classmates and the new Miraculous who was caught in the gun-sights.

 

“Eeep!” Marinette yelped almost comically at the very real and very threatening situation they’d come upon.

 

Well she’d been hoping for chaos, and she sure got her wish! Now she had to use it to her advantage. Her first move was to shove Alya into a bush. It was, unfortunately, the ONLY cover in the area; as the huge Swiss banking concern sat in the middle of a paved plaza, with only a few very small ornamental saplings around it.

 

But she’d rather have Alya under cover and herself exposed than the other-way around.

 

“Call the Police!” She hissed at her friend in the shrubbery, motioning her to stay down, and then turned to run around the corner of the building.

 

Glaring around, and not seeing anyone immediately nearby, Marinette ducked into one of the money changer alcoves. She almost called immediately for Tikki, until she remembered that this was a bank, and there were cameras _everywhere._ Her miraculous had some magical ability to obscure her identity, but she was not about to test that against 21 st century surveillance technology, particularly when she hadn’t yet actually become the miraculous Ladybug.

 

She’d been lucky so far about not being caught on camera at inopportune moments; but there was luck, and then there was tempting fate.

 

Looking out, she did find one advantage to her predicament.

 

It was broad daylight, and she had her own normal vision, not Ladybug’s black-and-white bug-sight.

 

This meant that she could witness Tigress d’Or in all her glory.

 

And glorious she was! Her costume was a satiny material, just as Marinette had thought the night before, with a soft sort of sheen reminiscent of fur. It was also a rich color, almost indescribable even to the girl who was a student of fashion and had more words for colors than most people knew there were colors for.

 

The blonde woman’s body-stocking and sarong were a luxurious sort of bronze; not quite gold, but not quite orange either. The twin-tailed girl supposed she shouldn’t be surprised at the magical color; her own faceted ladybug armor was an almost impossible cerise red. The stripes surrounding Tigress’s body were an inky black in contrast, and Marinette could now see that they each met in a slight chevron pointing up along the woman’s spine, just like a real tiger. And everything was striped down the back of her, from her neck to her ankles. The only thing lacking stripes was her short brassy blonde hair

 

As Marinette watched the tense scene before her unfolding, she noted that much like Chat Noir’s staff, Tigress’s fans seemed to be metallic, shimmering with the effect of brushed metal in the bright sunlight.

 

Just like Chat, Tigress d’Or’s ears were definitely decorative affairs, pinned somehow into her pixyish short hair, not moving or flicking in any way. Though she had to give the tiger-themed woman one thing… her audacious tiger-striped sarong was blowing in the light breeze almost theatrically, lending her an air of bravado compared to Chat’s goofy backwards belt-tail.

 

The fashion-obsessed girl-turned-heroine took all this in in a matter of seconds from her hiding place. Then she pulled her pocketbook up and opened it, speaking covertly into the clasp, “Tikki, what is she?”

 

The pink bug-themed imp in her clutch squeaked, floating delicately up and out of her hiding place and looking to the golden girl standing off against the gunmen, “I don’t know… it’s been centuries since there was a new Miraculous, Marinette!”

 

The lavender-haired girl chewed her lip delicately and frowned. She’d been counting on her magical companion to be able to shed light on the new hero the way she had the day Marinette had first donned her spots and met Chat Noir. If the little bobble-head didn’t know with five millennia of knowledge, then what hope did she have to figure things out herself?

 

If only there was some sort of catalogue of Miraculous costumes the way there was of the Agreste spring line! It would make things soooo much easier if she could just look up herself, Chat Noir, Tigress d’Or, and all.

 

The sound of a mechanical switch being flipped crystalized the situation and drew Marinette’s attention back to the new hero.

 

She looked up in the fading smoke to see that that clicking sound was the bank robbers flicking controls on the sides of their guns… probably the safety catches.

 

“Oh No!” she gasped, shaking her head in a panic. “What do we do?!”

 

Tikki made no sound, but watched with her giant sapphire eyes at the unfolding situation.

 

Up on the roof, Chat Noir didn’t have the luxury of just sitting back and watching. He extended his staff down to ground level and began vaulting across the street atop it. Unfortunately, bullets travel faster than teenage superheroes. By the time his booted feet hit the ground, the first shot had already rung out.

 

And plinked with a sort of popping sound into a swiftly deployed tiger-striped hand-fan.

 

Tigress d’Or glared with golden slit eyes over the fan she had used to intercept the projectile, “That’s how it is? You don’t even say anything? Just shoot at the hero like in the comic books? Do I _look_ like Majestia to you?”

 

Apparently it was the wrong thing to say, because the guy let go a spray of bullets from his gun.

 

This wasn’t a Hollywood movie; the automatic weapon exhausted itself in just under a minute, leaving behind a small pile of spent casings and steam and smoke trailing from its barrel. But that few seconds certainly should have been enough.

 

And against any normal foe it would have been.

 

But Tigress d’Or was armed with super powers, including fetishized weapons.

 

Her air-movers had instantly expanded in size to a meter across and she had whipped them back and forth through the paths of the bullets, blocking every one with flicks of her wrists. The two enlarged air blades easily covered most of her torso, and movements of her hands made up for any gaps.

 

“…now that’s handy… but I’m going to say they’re not fans of your moves.” Chat Noir marveled as he appeared at her side and moved in to cover her back.

 

He began to spin his staff weapon, causing it to glow and creating the same sort of magical shield behind her as he backed up to the other hero.

 

“What, and your stick is better than my carrot?” she made a show of flicking one hand around to her back to demonstrate she could cover herself with both fans from both sides.

 

“You wound me Lady Cat.” He purred as he watched the bank robbers circling them wearily.

 

“I’m no lady,” She growled, exposing teeth that, in the right light, could be taken for real fangs, “That’s the other one. Or did no one ever tell you the daring choice of _the lady or the tiger_?”

 

“Ah… English Literature never was my best subject…” the black cat demurred to the golden one as they stood back-to-back.

 

“Silly alleycat.” She rolled her gilt eyes, “It’s trial by Divine Chance. You marry the Lady…”

 

There came a clapping sound as Tigress d’Or collapsed her enlarged fans, resulting in two short square staves in her hands. With the same lightning speed she had shown the night before in leaping from a tree; she whipped the hand-fans downward sharply, disarming the two bank robbers on her side of the circle with deft precision; before overleaping Chat Noir in a backflip and disarming the third with a downstroke of one closed fan.

 

“Or the Tiger eats you alive.”

 

Chat Noir swallowed, his green eyes narrowing at the display, and at the portentous words as Tigress held her arms out to her sides in a show of her prowess, the collapsed fans shrinking back down to their normal size. “R-right.”

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

Two minutes later Marinette had managed to find a spot inside Credit Suisse which wasn’t bathed in electronic eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief while opening her pocket book, “Okay Tikki, Spots on!”

 

The pink kwami appeared from her clutch and swirled around the teenager, enabling her transformation into the Miraculous Ladybug. Spinning her fetish yoyo up to speed, Ladybug shot forth out of the big double doors of the bank and landed with her trademark grace right in front of the trio of unconscious bank robbers and the other two Miraculous heroes.

 

She looked from Tigress towards Chat and back, and then at the ground around them. The bullets were all deformed and mashed down from where they had hit Tigress’s golden fan shields, but wow were there a lot of them!

 

“M’Lady! Right on the spot as always!” Chat Noir cheered as he saw his spotted partner appear, “But the pussy cat patrol has got everything under control.”

 

“Well surely I can do something at least?” the Ladybug actually felt a little bit… jealous? Was that the word?  Maybe excluded, from the fight.

 

She slashed out with her miraculous charm and lashed together the hands and feet of the prone bank robbers with magical precision, nodding confidently to herself.

 

“You know, m’Ladybug,” Chat Noir inclined his head, resting a clawed fingertip against his lips in thought, “Tigress was just telling me about that story about the Lady and the Tiger, and now I have both… how is a guy to choose?”

 

Ladybug frowned at the insinuation from the coy cat, “You mean the one where the condemned man opens the wrong door and gets devoured by the tiger?”

 

She smirked, and indicated the blown out bank door to Credit Suisse behind her with a flick of her thumb, “They opened that one and look what they got. Not their lucky day to choose a tiger _and_ a black cat full of bad luck. Care to try yours?”

 

Chat paled suitably at the implication, tugging out his collar and swallowing theatrically. “Eh- heheheh maybe not.”

 

“Say Cheese!” Came an ebullient cry from somewhere to one side of the trio.

 

They turned with surprise, just in time to be flash-bulbed by Alya’s camera phone.

 

Tigress d’Or scowled, “I think that’s our cue to leave.”

 

A second later came the tell-tale _wee-wah_ of Parisian police sirens approaching. Ladybug tilted a hand to her ear and nodded, “Or that…”

 

“See you soon, Lady _and_ Tiger.” Chat doffed an imaginary hat and bowed with a flourish, before bounding off towards the rooflines, his staff extending  and vaulting him skywards.

 

“I’ll make my goodbyes as well…” Tigress offered gruffly. “Ladybugs may be pretty, and Alley Cats glossy, but Tigers prefer not to be seen.”

 

She splayed her fans open with a deft flick of her fingers, and then with a twirl, launched herself into the sky on the whirlwind they generated.

 

Ladybug was about to do the same, when she realized that she was left holding the bag… literally. Her yoyo was the only thing restraining the bank robbers and the bank bags lay right at her feet. And of course Alya was racing right towards her. 

 

“Zut,” she muttered under her breath.

 

Turning her bright smile to Alya, she tried to figure out how to extract herself from the situation before Alya asked if she’d seen Marinette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: So I had most of this done up to the start of the last section weeks ago, but then I got stuck on how to close out the chapter without dragging the scene on. Finding a natural break point for the three was a PITA. Anyways, as to Mari/Ladybug’s hair? There’s been ongoing debate. Some sources claim it is blue, some purple, and some black (as in comic book blue-black). The show is no help as I have several screenshots from episodes where it could easily be any of the three thanks to poor tone-matching by the checkers on the animation staff. The simplest explanation is that since Marinette is half-chinese, it probably IS supposed to be black. But since I’ve already committed to lavender here, I’ll stick with that, which works given the wide variety of hair tones in the show, from Juleka’s goth-black, to Nathalie’s red streak.   
> Hopefully the next installment comes more easily… And remember, Reviews = Love


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir” created by Thomas Astruc, and property of French TF1, Korean EBS, and English rights to Nickelodeon/Netflix. This work is a fan-work, intended under fair-use and not-for profit, I don’t own anything other than the original characters.

Ladybug did manage to evade and avoid _most_ of Alya’s questions. She did this by pretending to struggle with the restrained bank bandits. In truth there was no struggle at all. The magical yoyo fetish had caught entire helicopters and speeding cars in the past with nary a strain; so three human thieves was nothing to the unbreakable cord.

 

Once the police, led as always by Roger Raincomprix, arrived and bundled the gun toting thieves in; the Miraculous Ladybug quickly made her getaway good, yoyo’ing off into the sky with a muddled apology to Alya, promising her an interview at some point in the future. She heard some echoed complaint about that being a common promise and winced as she swung away.

 

As the teen heroine flung herself across Paris, her mood lightened again she giggled a bit to herself in consideration. She wondered just why it was that Alya hadn’t become Chatte Noir, instead of the mysterious blonde boy. The dark skinned island girl certainly had all the prerequisites… She was insatiably curious, she was bold to a fault, and supremely clever and keen eyed.

 

Alighting on the widow’s walk at home above the bakery, still grinning, Ladybug touched a fingertip to her right earring, “Tiki, de-transform me?”

 

The cerise and spots shimmered away, leaving behind plain old Marinette. She knew that after an ‘incident’ so close to the school; classes would be called off for the rest of the afternoon. It was getting to be a habit at the collège with all of the akumatizations… was that even a word? It probably should be.

 

Marinette went to her desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a tin of cookies. Tiki cheered and quickly flew past her, diving in and grabbing one out to nibble at. Mari smiled at the happy sounds her kwammi partner made and then settled down at her desk.

 

She giggled again and pulled out a sketch book, taken by her most recent thoughts. A few snappy strokes of the pencil outlined a basic female form, a bit “hippy” as Alya was, and then she began to go to work, crafting bold lines in black.

 

Working with quick inspiration, she began to refine details, until she had concocted a new “Miraculous” design as seen in the big book of heroes. It combined the features of Chat as she knew him, with the flair of a noir newspaper reporter.

 

In place of Chat’s backward facing belt and over-sized boots, “Chatte” wore a long black reporter’s trench coat with a popped collar, as well as an inky fedora with a press pass baring a paw-print stuffed in the electric green hat-band. Beneath the black coat she placed a sleek blouse, an impression towards old style men’s business attire, but with a smaller collar and an open teardrop neckline to clearly emphasize femininity. Dangling from the closed top button above the teardrop window, she hung the bell of the black cat. She also popped the eyes of the mask a bit more, giving it a bit more of an hourglass shape than Chat’s almost totally concealing mask. 

 

She then finished the look off with some pleated-front black-and-silver pinstripe slacks and a pair of polished men’s shoes, before titling it “Le Chatte Noire – Alya” with a flourishing script. She toyed with ideas and notes in the margins for the next few minutes, such as “Shirt, silver or white?” and “Magical photographer camera?” before sighing; setting it aside and feeling creatively fulfilled.

 

There was a knock at her stairway and she inclined her head, “Yes?”

 

“Girlfriend, are you up there? You’re being awfully quiet,” came her bestie’s ebullient voice as Alya herself popped her head up. “Guess who just got front row seats to the appearance of Paris’s newest Hero Sensation?!”

 

“Eeep!” the purple-headed girl yelped, looking for Tiki to tell her to hide, and then looking at her notebook, still sitting on her desk with the freshly used pencils. “Uh- ummmmm, just a minute, I’m… I’m in the shower!”

 

“In the shower?” Alya rolled her eyes, “Girl you don’t have a shower up here…”

 

Marinette chewed her lip, and quickly and crudely shoved her sketch book into a desk drawer, “Tiki, hide!”

 

Wherever the pink kwammi was, she made a sound of agreement and Marinette finally sighed, “Oh- okay, you got me. Come on up.”

 

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

Chat Noir, in contrast to his partner of the past year, did not go home to de-transform. Instead, he made his way, stealthily, after Tigris d’Or. First he’d made the show of extending his staff and bounding off in the opposite direction. Then he circled about along the rooftops of Paris, keeping hidden as best he could in the daylight while he moved back in the direction he’d seen the golden tiger move in.

 

Every time he heard a flicker or a noise out of place, he would pause in his purr-suit to try and locate its source. He always found it to just be the usual noises of a busy city, however. Sighing after nearly two hours of stalking someone who just didn’t seem to be there, the black cat of Paris settled on a spot at one of Ladybug’s and his normal perches, near Marinette’s home above the family bakery.

 

Only a moment later there was a growl from behind him, “I told you, Tigers don’t like to be seen.”

 

Normally cool and confident, even Chat Noir was a bit startled when someone managed to sneak up on him. Turning, his cheeks flushed with color, the boy held up his hands, “But cats are curious!”

 

That earned him another growl from the golden-themed heroine which would have made his ears lay back, were they real.

 

“You know the rules, Chat…” She grumbled, crossing arms across her lithe chest, “We don’t know each other.”

 

“Well, you kind of just appeared!” he complained in response to the terse tone, “I wanted to at least try to say bonjour to you in a down tick.”

 

She eyed him with those amber-hued orbs a long moment and then tilted her head, “So say it.”

 

“Say what?”

 

“Bonjour, Aloha, Buenos Tardes, Hello, Ni Hao, Guten Tag, Privyet, Konichiwa, what you say you wanted to say!”

 

“Wow, that’s a lot of languages.” The black cat mused, trying not to be put off by the irritated tone of his fellow feline.

 

“Tigers have a huge natural range,” She huffed, eying him.

 

Chat inclined his head curiously, “You really take your Miraculous seriously, don’t you?”

 

Tigress watched him wearily also, “And you don’t?”

 

“Well, I don’t yeowl at the moon or scratch on the sofa anyway,” He mused, tapping his chin in thought. “And I’m pretty sure Ladybug doesn’t eat aphids and fend off ants in her spare time.”

 

d'Or palmed her face at the literal nature of the counter, hiding a sardonic smirk, “No, I suppose not. Maybe I am taking myself a bit too seriously.”

 

“It happens from time to time, Stripes,” Chat extended his lightly clawed hand to her. “Shall we try again? Hello, I’m Chat Noir.”

 

After an uncertain moment, Tigress took the proffered hand and shook, “And I’m Tigress d’Or. Pleased to meet you.”

 

Somewhere near them, a church bell began chiming, as if to punctuate the cemented familiarity. This caused Chat to suddenly yank up his leatherette sleeve and look at his concealed wrist watch, “Oh no! The g-“

 

Suddenly he remembered the caveat on identities and eyed Tigress. If she did go to his collège, and she heard him call his driver ‘Gorilla,’ she could deduce who he was, “Erm, the Guys will be looking for me! Looks like it’s my turn to run off! Promise not to follow me Lady Tiger?”

 

She gave him a mocking glance up and down, “Chase you? I’ve seen better. Go on, little cat, meet your non-masked friends.”

 

Chat tilted his head at this, before bouncing off again, cursing himself for losing track of time and location. Now he had to go all the way back to the school for Gorilla to pick him up.

**__ **

**_ ~Miraculous~ _ **

 

“Oooh! And then I got this shot!”

 

Marinette almost face-palmed as Alya showed her the photos on her phone of their encounter of an hour before. Not that Alya knew it was _their_ encounter.

 

The current picture was by far the most embarrassing so far. It was basically Ladybug’s spotted butt angled towards Alya’s smartphone as she’d made a show of restraining the bank robbers; with the heroine looking over her shoulder asking to not be distracted.

 

“I mean, those angles! That action line! The composition is great isn’t it?!” the islander girl cheered enthusiastically as she considered the shot.

 

“Y-yeah, sure Alya…” the pigtailed girl demurred.

 

How could she tell her bestest friend that she felt like she looked like she’d been eating macarons and macaroons both all day long when looking at that shot? The girl was so proud of it.

 

“You know,” the tanned girl pressed a finger to her chin in thought, “I’ll bet, with a little photoshopping, we could put your face on her body! Maybe send it to Adrien anonymously? Get him thinking about you as more than just a friend?”

 

Marinette’s eyes went wide and her face, she was sure, turned every bit as red as her Ladybug costume. She shoved her friend off her bed in a nervous fit of embarrassment, “Alya!!!”

 

It was only a moment later that she realized how close the girl was to hitting on the truth of the matter, and that it was only for the weird Miraculous magic that no one realized that her pigtails WERE Ladybug’s. That caused her to go doubly red and nervous and she huffed, kicking her feet in frustration, “Noooooo!!!! I’m SOOOOOOOO not Ladybug… erm, material, so not Ladybug material!”

 

Big brown eyes goggled at Marinette for a moment from the floor, “Well, okay, fine… it was just a thought! You’re never going to get his attention by stuttering through every sentence you know.”

 

With a sigh, the purple-haired girl shook her head, “I know…. But I’m not going to send him made up pictures either.”

 

_‘even if it wouldn’t really be made up at all,’_ She considered archly. _‘I wonder what he would think, though, knowing that I was really Ladybug, the one who saved him those times and…’_

 

“Ah… you’re thinking about it, aren’t you girl?” Alya grinned conspiratorially from where she now sat on the floor.

 

Marinette blew a breath through her bangs and crossed her arms over her chest in a show of defiance. This only earned an even bigger grin from Alya.

 

“So,” the chef’s daughter queried as she slipped her phone back into her pocket, “Just where did you get to after you shoved me into that bush?”

 

Fortunately, Marinette already had this one covered, “I was sure Ladybug would tell you that she found me and lassoed me up to a roof before she went into the fight.”

 

“I-… never thought to ask, actually,” Alya tilted her head in sudden consideration. How had such an important detail like the safety of her bestie slipped her mind?

 

“It took my like an hour to find the fire escape and climb down.” The bakers’ daughter headed off the next question before her reporter friend could even ask it. “The roof of Trousselier florist.”

 

“Well, at least it smelled good I bet,” Alya nodded.

 

“Smelled like hot tar. I was on the roof, not in the shop,” Marinette reminded her.

 

Indeed she had been on that roof to memorize that smell, just not at the particular interval she was telling. One of the strange bifurcations of life as a masked superheroine, she supposed.

 

Alya made a face at this, and then shrugged. “Well you sure did a good job avoiding getting any on you. When I was lady Wifi and woke up on the roof of Le Grande Paris, I ended up with tar all over my shoes.”

 

The twin-tailed girl had to swallow an eep at this revealed hole in her story. After a moment, rubbing the back of her neck nervously, she nodded, “Yup, I got lucky for once, I guess!”

 

She was about to expand on her luck on this point when Alya looked away, “Oh, hey, you dropped one of your pencils! Those go in the bottom drawer, right?”

 

Marinette cringed as her red-tipped friend reached to open up the bottom drawer of her desk, where her sketchbook with the Chat Alya was currently hidden. “eeep!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one of these issues where I had all but the last section finished for a few weeks. Sorry, life has been rough lately, hard to get the vivacious mood needed for these characters, much easier to get Shego Snark. Hope you enjoy, and remember, Comments = Love!

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Well, my first attempt at Ladybug. It’s a bit of a departure for me… “Miraculous” has a lighter and less biting tone than most of my other stuff like Gargoyles, Darkwing Duck, Avatar, Kim Possible, etc. So I’m going to try to keep the lighter tone compared to my other stuff. I decided to wait till all the episodes of S1 had aired (at least in the French) before tackling it, so I didn’t get stuck behind the eight-ball idea-wise. And pardon my spotty French, I have only a passable knowledge of the language, and Goggle.  
> Also, special thanks to fellow writer Trackula for helping me to nail down a few details about the Tigress, such as making her Gold Versus White and what magical tool to give her.


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